Evolutionary prospects for labeled "dull" and "superior" ?

do you have any links? I was under the general impression that that genetics was more responsible for analytic capacity, while family upbringing and cultural conditions were responsible for shaping the genetic capacity. That is probably what the original post was referring to by societies.

At FAMU law, blacks a minoritySupporters of the new law school said it would boost the percentage of black students entering Florida law schools. It hasn't happened.By DAVID KARP

Enrollment at the new FAMU law school is 44 percent white and 12 percent Hispanic. Black students make up just 36 percent of the student body.

Those percentages are not what Florida lawmakers had in mind when they agreed in 2000 to re-establish the law school, which had been shuttered by the state in 1968 after the beginning of court-ordered integration.

FAMU supporters had promised the school would boost the small percentage of black lawyers in Florida. Instead, the percentage of black students entering Florida law schools has dropped since 2002, when FAMU opened its doors.

And racial diversity at Florida's older, already established law schools also is declining.

"The bottom line appears to be that we are redistributing fundamentally the same number of African-American applicants," said Joseph Harbaugh, the law school dean at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, which has seen its percentage of entering black law students shrink from 12.4 percent three years ago to 5.4 percent today.

The numbers are similar at the University of Florida, where the number of black first-year law students dropped by half this fall. The law schools at Florida State University and the University of Miami also have seen declines.

FAMU was expected to offset those losses by expanding the pool of black law school applicants. But it was built in Orlando, where it has drawn many white and Hispanic students.

Law school dean Percy Luney Jr. said he hears from FAMU alumni who want the school to be predominantly black. But he can't do that, he said. It would be wrong, and it would hurt the school's efforts to build a national reputation.

"I know there are people who think I'm not doing the service I'm supposed to do because I am not admitting more black students," Luney said in an interview. "But I cannot admit black students who do not have a strong likelihood of passing the Bar.""I think that is the inherent conflict we have. And I don't know how we get beyond that."

do you have any links? I was under the general impression that that genetics was more responsible for analytic capacity, while family upbringing and cultural conditions were responsible for shaping the genetic capacity. That is probably what the original post was referring to by societies.

"Like co-conspirator David Bernstein, I think it wasn't unreasonable for Justice Clarence Thomas to believe that he got into Yale Law School without the aid of affirmative action. It is important to remember that Thomas was in the top two percent of his undergraduate class at Holy Cross. When I was a student at Yale Law School in the 1990s, I had numerous white classmates who had gotten in by virtue of being in the top 1-2 percent at undergraduate institutions of the same caliber as Holy Cross, and in some cases ones significantly less prestigious. Admittedly, I don't have any aggregate statistics; but I certainly met quite a few such students during my time at YLS. I was able to meet a significant percentage of the other students at YLS at the time, due to the school's small size; so the people I met were probably a roughly representative sample of the YLS student body. Most of the white YLS students from non-elite undergrad institutions did not have anything in their backgrounds comparable to Thomas' inspirational story of growing up in poverty in a broken home (Thomas' father left his family when he was an infant, and Thomas was raised by his grandfather).

Assuming that Thomas had a good LSAT score, the combination of his record at Holy Cross and his life story might well have been enough to get him admitted to YLS were he white. Based on my observations, he might have gotten in on that basis in the 1990s - a time when admissions standards were probably slightly higher than in the 1970s because by that point Yale had regained its standing as the generally acknowledged no. 1 law school (a position it had arguably lost to Harvard in the 70s).

As liberal constitutional law scholar Mark Tushnet documents in this article, Thomas' opposition to affirmative action is not based on the view that it is intrinsically unjust to whites, but on his belief that it does blacks more harm than good in the aggregate. For reasons I discussed in detail here, it therefore would not be unethical for Thomas to benefit from affirmative action while personally opposing it. In fact, however, it is possible that Thomas had good reason to believe that he might have gotten to YLS even without the benefit of affirmative action. If that conjecture is right, then affirmative action was a net loss for him in that phase of his career (though it probably helped him later in the Reagan Administration). Its existence led potential employers and others to doubt his abilities, without helping him to get into Yale."http://volokh.com/posts/1191797143.shtml

The Volokh Conspiracy[David Bernstein, February 4, 2008 at 4:36am] Trackbacks

Barack Obama and the Harvard Law Review:

Barack Obama was the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. The NY Times carried a story [link below] about this in Februrary 1990, which included a few quotes from Obama:

"The fact that I've been elected shows a lot of progress," Mr. Obama said today in an interview. "It's encouraging." "But it's important that stories like mine aren't used to say that everything is O.K. for blacks. You have to remember that for every one of me, there are hundreds or thousands of black students with at least equal talent who don't get a chance," he said, alluding to poverty or growing up in a drug environment... On his goals in his new post, Mr. Obama said: "I personally am interested in pushing a strong minority perspective. I'm fairly opinionated about this. But as president of the law review, I have a limited role as only first among equals." Therefore, Mr. Obama said, he would concentrate on making the review a "forum for debate," bringing in new writers and pushing for livelier, more accessible writing.

For what it's worth, a quick look at volume 104 of the Harvard Law Review suggests that not surprisingly given the genre, Obama didn't succeed in publishing "livelier, more accessible writing." But with regard to "new writers," the extremely prestigious Supreme Court term Foreword that year was written by Robin West, now of Georgetown, but who was then a professor at University of Maryland. Prof. West, moreover, didn't have the typical pedigree, having graduated from University Maryland Law School (yes, in theory completely irrelevant to her credentials to write the Foreword, but if I know my elite law review editors, something that gave many of them significant pause.) More typically, the Review invited Guido Calabresi (dean, Yale), Kathleen Sullivan (professor, Harvard), and Morton Horwitz (professor, Harvard) to write the next three years' Forewords. Prof. West is a very prolific, influential scholar, and was an inspired choice from outside the usual group of elite law school professors the HLR would consider. Call this the Obama effect, perhaps, though I'd be interested in hearing from readers who were editors that year about his effect on HLR culture.http://volokh.com/posts/1202117776.shtml

I haven't been following this thread up close, but I saw an episode of Star Trek this weekend that reminded me of it.

There was this alien society that was made up of two main classes--a class of politicians and intellectuals who lived a life of priviledge in the clouds and a class of workers who lived on the surface and in the caves below. When asked to explain this situation by Captain Kirk, the head politician claimed essentially that the workers below were an inferior race....

Color, Controversy and DNABy Henry Louis Gates Jr. | TheRoot.com

A conversation between The Root Editor-in-Chief Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nobel laureate and DNA pioneer James Watson about race and genetics, Jewish intelligence, blacks and basketball and Watson's African roots.

James Watson: I've thought about these things a lot over the last couple of months, because those who know me well, you know, I'm mortified by those three sentences in the Sunday Times article. I'm not a monster, and yet, if you took them at their face value, I seem to be nasty.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. : But Dr. Watson, on behalf of the African Americans who admired you, studied your work, and read The Root.com, where in the world did those words come from?

JW: One sentence was just taken out of my book. It was [that] we shouldn't expect that people in different parts of the world have equal intelligence, because we don't know that. [Some] people say that they should be the same. I think the answer is we don't know. … With the other two sentences, I talked to [the Times reporter] for eight hours. When I read the [quotes], I had no memory whatsoever of ever saying them. Because if I'd said anything like that, it was so inappropriate!

HLG: Well, are you gloomy about the future of Africa?

JW: Not if we educate them. I think we've got to focus on education.

HLG: As soon as you were quoted in The Times, David Duke posted on his Web site. He said, at last, the smartest white man in the world, the man who identified DNA, has confirmed what we've known all the time. … http://www.theroot.com/id/46667?GT1=38002

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is editor-in-chief of The Root and is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University.

HLG: I can't run. It's a good thing I was a good student because I wouldn't have made it. … My father, though, will be 95, June 8th, God willing. And my father, every time he passes a basketball court of black boys, young black men, he will say, "If we study calculus like we study basketball, we would be running MIT." So to him, it's not genetic. It's the fact that we're in basketball laboratories instead of math laboratories, all of our lives.

James Watson: Yes, and that's bad. Black kids have got to get different aspirations.

Canada's largest school board is poised to set tough targets to chop the alarming 40 per cent dropout rate among black students to 15 per cent within five years. Through mentors, teacher training and close tracking of the most needy students, the Toronto District School Board's sweeping new Urban Diversity Strategy – to be voted on tomorrow by a board committee and by all trustees next week – would aim to make all intermediate and high schools across the city more sensitive to the demographic roadblocks often facing students of differing backgrounds.

The action plan would also target the 25 most racially diverse, low-performing schools for extra youth workers, outreach staff to work with parents, summer programs for Grade 8 students who fail any of the 3 Rs, and a network of teachers who feel passionate about working in such challenging schools.

"We know this is not going to be an easy task, but with the data we now know about our students, and with what we see is working already at some schools – plus a little bit of pressure – we know it can be done," said Gerry Connelly, the board's director of education, in an interview yesterday.

The report is one of the ways the board is responding to new data showing children from poor or turbulent backgrounds or marginalized communities often lag behind.

While trustees voted to open an Africentric alternative school in September 2009 as a sort of test lab for a more global curriculum and more black teachers as role models, the board also charged staff to come up with ways to help children at risk in all schools.

But instead of recommending special programs tailored for children of various high-risk groups – Portuguese children, for example, or those from Somalia or Afghanistan – the staff suggests helping all teachers be more sensitive to the challenges diversity can bring.

"This approach won't ignore the role of race, or gender, or poverty, or disability; these are all part of students' reality," said Lloyd McKell, the board's executive officer of student and community equity, who consulted with many community groups while helping draft the plan.

"But our training will help teachers recognize the effect racial diversity has on students' lives." Among other recommendations:

Chop the overall dropout rate by 5 per cent in each of the next five years.

Every child not meeting the standard between Grades 7 and 10 would be assigned a staff mentor or "learning coach" – someone the report calls "a caring adult in the school" – to act as an advocate, someone who follows up when they stumble and offers help. "This is always at the top of the wish list of every student we talk to," said McKell;Principals would ensure experienced teachers are assigned to work with students with the greatest need, rather than automatically assigning veteran educators to the university-bound "academic" stream;

Expand free Grade 7 and 8 summer literacy and numeracy camps to all of the 25 high-need schools for students below standard in reading, writing or arithmetic, and have parents come to at least one session to learn about standards;

Boost after-school homework clubs, free tutoring, and expand access to library and computer labs. George Harvey Collegiate Institute, near Keele St. and Eglinton Ave. W., extended library hours and added popular "graphic novels" to the shelves, for example. Library borrowing jumped 245 per cent – and scores in the Grade 10 literacy test have jumped 6 per cent in one year.

While Connelly would not put a price tag on the extra support, she said much can be covered by using existing funding in a more strategic way, and noted the board will also seek some funding from Queen's Park. Sandra Carnegie-Douglas, past-president of the Jamaican-Canadian Association, called the plan "a good start" but warned it is crucial to choose staff mentors that truly care about children, not just track their attendance.

"Not all staff is that attentive to the barriers many students face, so how will you choose `an adult who cares?' The community should have some input," she said. Education Professor Patrick Solomon, who founded the Urban Diversity program at York University, hailed the plan to train teachers to be more sensitive to the community, a process he said is best done by having teachers design community projects in the neighbourhoods where they work.

Marcie Ponte of the Working Women's Community Centre, which runs a successful tutoring program for Portuguese children, said the board's plan is a sign it is "taking at-risk students seriously – and mentoring is a key piece.

THE JOURNAL OF BLACKS IN HIGHER EDUCATIONWeekly BulletinJuly 10, 2008Law School at North Carolina Central University to Host the Chief Justice Roberts

Students at the historically black law school at North Carolina Central University in Durham will have to be well prepared for next spring’s moot court competition. The judge presiding over the final competition will be John Roberts, chief justice of the United States.

Raymond Pierce, dean of the law school, met the chief justice at a judicial conference and Roberts offered to officiate at the moot court proceedings.

It will be the first time a current member of the U.S. Supreme Court has made an appearance on the campus of the law school. There are about 600 students at the law school, about one half of them are African Americans.

THE JOURNAL OF BLACKS IN HIGHER EDUCATIONWeekly BulletinGeorge W. Bush, the NAACP, and the Persistent Damage to Black Higher Education

"Both of President Bush’s nominees to the Supreme Court — John Roberts and Samuel Alito —appear to be strong opponents of affirmative action. In late 1981 Roberts wrote a critique of a Civil Right Commission report in which he said the “obvious reason” for the failure of affirmative action programs was because they “required the recruiting of inadequately prepared candidates.”

The record on Roberts appears to be even worse due to information that came to light in his confirmation hearings. Before the hearings it was discovered that a file headed “Affirmative Action” was missing from the White House files stored at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Roberts had worked as a White House aide during the Reagan administration.

A report from the National Archives inspector general found that White House aides from the Bush administration visited the Reagan Library to do a background check on Roberts. The report found that the aides were permitted to bring personal items into the library and they were left alone at times with the document collection. The report says that the White House aides were the last known people to see the file entitled “Affirmative Action.”...."http://www.jbhe.com/features/51_specialreport.html